As much as I adore my wife and think she looks raveshing in this blood and piss-soaked bathroom (the pools of gore really set off her eyes), I don’t appreciate the fact that she’s needlessly disturbed a zombie thug. I don’t think the zombie thug appreciated being disturbed either; he expresses his disatisfaction by punching me in the chest repeatedly as I try to apologise for my careless wife.
Tch, women!
I really, really don’t like being in this restroom. The only thing worse than being in the restroom would be to roll around in the gallons of warm, coagulating blood on the floor of the restroom. Just as I turn to leave, the zombie swings at my partner, misses her and knocks me on my ass instead.
Tch, women! And zombies, I guess. Tch, women and zombies.
I slosh about on the tile floor, trying to get up.
Ugh. This is one of the few times you’ll catch me washing my hands after leaving a restroom.
Nope, I’ve had enough of this partnership. She’s tried to steal my car, drove the damn thing into a palm tree and keeps leading me into near-lethal situations. I’d rather be in a relationship with Chris Brown than put up with her for another minute. To further enforce my point, she inexplicably hits me in the back with an oar.
It’s definitely time to go our separate ways. I’m sorry honey, it’s not you, it’s me: I just don’t feel as attracted to insane sociopaths as I used to.
But how to get out of this sham of a marriage? Once I’m outside the bathroom I try running as far away from her as my battered and bruised legs will stumble me, but this particular hotel complex is teeming with the undead. Ah, yes - coming here was another one of her good ideas. Tch.
I’ll never make it out of here alive if I go solo. As it stands, my only options are to kill myself or reload a previous save. Although suicide looks like the best possible outcome for this relationship, I can’t do either of these things since they’d directly contravene the rules of Iron Man Mode and instantly bring this series to a close…
… but I can drop out of the multiplayer session, right? That’s not strictly against the rules?
Yeah, I’ll just drop out of our joint game and go back to my single player session. That’s how break-ups should pan out, really; one person in the relationship just decides to go off hitting zombies with hammers alone.
The wife suddenly goes into busy mode - no doubt thinking about dresses and shoes and burning down orphanages - so I figure this is a good time to slink out of the partnership. Two menu clicks and a call to my lawyer later, and I’m teleported back at the life station with Sinamoi; to all intents and purposes, my now ex-wife has been relegated to a parralel universe for all I care.
I’m sure you guys agree I’m better off alone here. I feel a bit mad about skipping out with that hussy, so I help Sinamoi and the others with some odd jobs around the base camp.
Yep, it’s definitely best if I keep multiplayer out of this adventure, as I’m only likely to get paired with an imbecile whose actions will bring about my death.
Dr. Hongz, it turns out, is a complete imbecile whose actions are likely to bring about my death.
He also isn’t up for any company, as evidenced by the torrent of abuse he screams at me and the emphatic demands that I stay out of his game. He clearly wants to be left alone, so I do the right thing and become his shadow for the next ten minutes.
For my own amusement I block every doorway he tries to get through, pick up health kits and weapons just as he’s about to grab them himself and talk to every NPC in the room at the same time so the jumble of dialogue from ten different people is deafening. I don’t have my mic plugged in and neglect to chat to him over text, so to him it must just look like I’m either ignoring or just can’t hear his repeated plea that I make sweet love to myself (he phrased it a bit more forcefully).
This goes on for some time and neither of us achieve much in terms of advancing in the game. On top of that, he finally works out that the less he screams about having sexual relations with my mother over his headset at me, the less interested I become in annoying him. After a few minutes of silent walking around, I decide to leave him to it and go do something productive.
As I walk off and begin making my way down a sand dune, he calls after me in a more measured voice.
“Hey… Zeke.”
Oh, here we go. What does he want?
“Could you at least spare me a weapon or some money? I’ve got nothin’.”
A reasonable enough request, I suppose. I walk over and hand him an olive branch - an olive branch shaped like a baseball bat with nails sticking out of it. I also give him one of my two medkits, just to show that if you put aside the trolling and uselessness and incessant distraction, I’m actually a pretty cool guy to play Dead Island with.
Having left him with some essentials, I make moves towards the dunes once more, and once more he protests. For the first time during our interaction, I send a message: ‘Heh, am I growing on you?’. He tells me to just shut up and get in the car since I seem to know where I’m going and what I’m doing.
Misguided fool. I get in the car and quickly correct him.
A minute later and I’ve driven us over the edge of a cliff.
I’m not sure what quite happened, really - one minute we were cruising towards the next objective on the map, and the next minute our truck is hanging over fifty feet of fresh air. I probably shouldn’t have been updating my Facebook status on the other screen while driving, but thanks to Dr. Hongz screaming at the last minute, I managed to slam the breaks on before launching over the edge. No sweat!
But we’re kinda stuck. I’m a bit too nervous to just open the door and jump out in case I fall to my death, but my companion isn’t as cautious. He tentatively makes it out and around to the back of the truck and jumps into the flatbed, holding it down long enough for me to get traction with the rear wheels and reverse to safety.
Right, let me sort my mirrors and seat out and we’ll continue on!
“Get the hell out of the car,” Dr. Hongz snarls, appearing at the driver’s side window with a baseball bat I gave him.”You can’t drive for shit.”
He does have a fair point, on reflection. I relinquish control of the truck, and moments later we’re off on our way! And moments after that and we’ve crashed straight into a tree. Maaaaan:
We’re almost instantly overrun with zombies, but between the two of us we should be able to… where’s he gone?
“Run away!” Dr. Hongz screams, running to the chalet complex nearby. I guess if he’s not sticking around, I don’t have any other option but to follow suit. This turns out to be a pretty disastrous decision on my part.
The good doctor has disappeared somewhere deep inside the collection of wooden huts and bars, and I can’t seem to find him. But in his haste to put distance between himself and the horde on the road, he’s stirred just about every single zombie in the complex as he sprinted through it. Not famed for their intellectual superiority, the swarm of zombies now have no idea what put them in alert mode or why they’re suddenly in the mood for some brain-chomping… but they sure as hell know I’m here.
Um. Hey.
I’m vaguely aware of Hongz yelling and cursing over the airwaves but can’t see him anywhere in the vicinity. It looks like I’m all alone on this one.
Usually I can get a few free attacks while they’re slowly pulling themselves away from whatever corpse they’re munching on, but this time they’re all primed, ready and coming straight at me from all angles. I feel a wave of satisfaction as my wooden spikey thingamajig cracks the skull of the first zombie, but before I can turn it into a skull-smashing spree, a zombie attacks from behind and ruins my day. I spin around and swing the mace wildly but fail to connect with anything, and this gives the first zombie the chance to also hit me from behind. I teach it a lesson by tripping over a sun lounger.
Yet another zombie takes the opportunity to grab me. I give it a cautionary punch in the side of the head before it can take any damage, but I’m already pretty roughed up and surrounded. It’s everything I can do to battle my way out of the horde - I try to kick my way out, but my stamina is depleted and my attacks are having very little impact.
In a last ditch attempt at showing these guys who’s boss, I try implementing the advanced fighting tactic of laying on my back and bleeding to death.
My vision goes blurry and bloodshot. It seems that my goose is cooked.
Just as I’m about to die, I see a break in the group of zombies wailing on me and roll through it. This lands me into the confined swimming pool which is the allegorical equivalent of leaping from frying pan to fire, except I’d kinda prefer to be in an actual fire than a disgusting pool because at least that way I’ll be on fire and the zombies won’t want to touch me.
Either way I’m totally stuck, but at least it gives me some respite in which I can heal up with a medkit.
Aaaaaah. Lovely, refreshing medkit. They should sell these at bars.
The zombies drop into the blood-filled pool and close in. Newly replenished, I kill quite a few of them, which gives me hope and courage - I redouble my efforts to fight through this so I can sprint back to the safety of the truck. In fact, if you were to observe my efforts and plot them on a graph, you’d probably find that my efforts have not only redoubled but perhaps even retripled.
I’m determined to get out of this alive. And Screw Dr. Hongz, I neither know nor care where he is but judging by the noise he’s making on the audiostream I think he probably regrets splitting up.
Four zombies left to kill. Three zombies. Two zombies left… you know what, I might just make it out of here! I’m pretty low on health again, though.
Good job I’ve got a second medkit to see me through! Man, if I didn’t have that second…
… um.
That second medkit - where is it?
I had two medkits at the start of this session. I’ve used one, and I could really use the second one right about now…
… aahhhh. I gave it to Dr. Hongz, didn’t I?
"Help" indeed.
Here’s a lesson for you, kiddies.
Altruism never pays.
Thanks for reading.